Let your money talk to save historical landmarks

Published 5:30 am, Sunday, April 29, 2007

The River Oaks Shopping Center will have a new look unless plans change.

The River Oaks Shopping Center will have a new look unless plans change.

Photo: Weingarten Realty Investors

Let your money talk to save historical landmarks

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IN Houston, money has always mattered more than history. So it came as a surprise last summer that the city showed a sudden interest in its past, and in the special places that show its imprint.

Too many of them are already gone. The Shamrock Hotel made mythic by Giant? Leveled to make way for a parking lot. The Fourth Ward that gave us Lightnin' Hopkins and Arnett Cobb? Buried under Midtown, with "historic district" signs denoting nothing much but irony. The 1930s Jeff Davis hospital? The Gulf Publishing building? Countless Victorian houses, entire blocks of bungalows? Gone, gone, gone.

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GHPA predicted that they'd fall like dominos. First to go would be the shopping-center building — one of the twin buildings that in 1937 formed the
River Oaks Community Center
, among the first and classiest of America's strip malls. On the site would rise a big new mall building anchored by a Barnes & Noble.

The chain bookseller would then close its nearby Bookstop location, leaving the Alabama Theater empty and its site to be redeveloped as a high-rise. Then, sometime after Landmark Theatres' lease runs out in 2010, Weingarten would continue remodeling the River Oaks Shopping Center by razing the River Oaks theater. It would make way for another high-rise.

Now the first domino is about to fall.

Never mind that Houstonians erupted when they heard the news. Never mind that City Hall strengthened Houston's preservation ordinance, once the weakest in the nation, so that now it's ... well, probably still the weakest in the nation, but stronger than it used to be. And never mind that Weingarten's CEO promised to explore other options, to consider any solution that would give his shareholders the high profits they expect to wring from that valuable real estate.

None of that has really changed anything. All three pieces of Houston's history remain on the critical list.

Weingarten recently told the shopping-center building's tenants to clear out. Three Brothers Bakery will close on May 5, and the Black-Eyed Pea and other tenants are expected to exit by the end of the month. Once they're gone, there's nothing to stop the bulldozers.

City government is already doing its feeble best. Last week the Houston Archaeological and Historical Commission — the group that advises the City Council on such matters — exercised every watt of its puny power and started the slow process of declaring all three to be city landmarks. "It probably won't make much difference," mourned commission chair Betty Chapman.

Surely by now Weingarten knows about preservation tax incentives. And surely the company wouldn't be much inconvenienced by the strongest weapon the city could deploy to protect such a landmark: a 90-day waiting period before the proposed destruction.

That's all. At most.

But the bulldozers haven't arrived yet. And until they do, there's still hope for all three buildings.

Yes, it's a long shot — but it's not too late for one of those "win-win" outcomes that the City Council likes to tout. It's not too late for Barnes & Noble and Weingarten to emerge from this debacle as heroes, saviors of the city's heritage.

But first, we need to get their attention. And to do it Houston-style.

This week, let's stage a buy-in.

Show that you care

Sometime between now and next Sunday, let's all visit the Alabama Bookstop. And let's all purchase something: a book, a magazine, a birthday card, a Mother's Day gift. Let's drink lattes in the coffee bar. Do our Christmas shopping. Whatever.

The point is to show that we care enough about the city's historical buildings to make a point of spending our money in them. We'll show that we're paying attention and that we'll reward preservation of the places that make Houston special.

We won't have to make threats. We won't have to hint what we'll do if the first domino falls, or scream that we'll remember who destroyed Houston's landmarks.

Our dollars will say that for us, and they'll say it in the language that Weingarten and Barnes & Noble understand.